NATO's Eastern Question

Here are the arguments, pro and con, about expanding the Alliance to include former Warsaw Pact adversaries and others.

Page Content

An ambitious, US-led campaign to bring new European nations into
NATO has stirred controversy throughout the Western Alliance as well as in the
lands of the old Soviet Union and its empire.

The Western plan proposes to con­sider full NATO membership
for former members of the now-defunct Warsaw Pact, under certain condi­tions.
Central and east Europeans overwhelmingly favor this prospect, especially the
US-backed security guarantees that come with NATO membership.

However, anti-Western Russian nationalists—and even many
pro-Western reformers—view the Al­liance's planned eastward move with mounting
alarm. Americans and west­ern Europeans, for their part, appear deeply divided
on the subject.

The problem dates to January 1994, when NATO offered a vague
auxil­iary status to central and eastern European nations and former Soviet
republics.

In fifteen months, twenty-six na­tions—former Warsaw Pact
mem­bers, Soviet republics, and European neutrals, such as Sweden, Finland, and
Austria—had joined the Partnership for Peace. By November 1995, twelve nations
had become full-fledged "partners." Sixteen were participating in a
"coordination cell" at Supreme Headquarters Allied Pow­ers Europe in
Belgium.

Now, the sixteen current members of the Alliance are coming
face to face with the question of admitting new members to the NATO structure
and assessing the military, political, and economic consequences of these acts.
What follows is an accounting of the major points made by propo­nents and
opponents.

The Case for Expansion

NATO Stability

NATO, the most successful mili­tary and political alliance
the world had ever seen, engendered a high degree of western European coop­eration,
integration, and stability for more than four decades.

In Europe's post–Cold War tumult, however, the formerly
anti-Soviet Alliance increasingly came to seem anachronistic. The great issues
and problems confronting Europeans were no longer to be found along the Iron
Curtain but in newly democratic and independent nations of eastern Eu­rope and
the old USSR, with the po­litical and economic futures of these countries at
stake.

Secretary of State Warren M. Chris­topher contended that the
Alliance faced a "historic choice." It could "embrace
innovation" and find a new purpose, or it could go on as it had for almost
fifty years and "risk irrel­evance" and perhaps break up.

It is this prospect—the specter of Europe without NATO—that
deeply troubles US leaders. Former Secre­tary of State Henry A. Kissinger said
expansion will bolster the US pres­ence and western European "equilib­rium"
and help thwart "reemergence of historical European rivalries" be­tween
such big continental powers as France and Germany.

Extended Democracy

Alliance officials contend that the promise of membership
gives the Western democracies greater lever­age over the political transforma­tions
now under way in nations to the east.

NATO requires that prospective members be free-enterprise
democ­racies with civilian control over the armed forces. This, proponents of
expansion claim, strengthens the hand of political moderates in their
inevitable showdowns with hard­liners, right and left, in the formerly
Communist nations.

Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott contended,
"Nations that are encouraged in their aspirations to join NATO are more
likely to make a successful transition from their Communist pasts."

In a September 1995 report on the matter, NATO stated,
"The benefits of common defense and . . . integra­tion are important to
protecting the further democratic development of new members."

Damper on New
Conflicts

In the view of proponents, NATO expansion will prevent or
minimize simmering rivalries in the East, such as the one that has torn apart
large swaths of what used to be Yugosla­via.

They say that the promise of NATO membership has helped
fledgling democracies in newly independent nations cope with and overcome some
of their chronic internal and external ethnic and territorial rivalries that
have swept these nations into con­flicts for centuries.

Participation in the Partnership for Peace and the promise
of NATO mem­bership, for example, is said to have induced Hungary to back away
from open conflict with Slovakia and with Romania over borders and toward
resolution of disputes, much as Turkey and Greece had muted their hostilities
to gain admission to NATO.

Expanded Military
Contacts

An expanded NATO and the Part­nership for Peace, say
proponents, would strengthen military-to-military ties between Western and
Eastern na­tions and reduce the possibility of misunderstandings or
miscalculations.

Already, the Partnership for Peace has provided some of the
military­-to-military relationships that enabled the United States and Russia
to strike a landmark agreement in October that would enable them to field a
joint 4,000-member force in Bosnia-Hercegovina to carry out engineer­ing,
construction, and transportation duties in support of the planned 60,000-member
NATO-led peace implementation force.

Extended US Influence

For Washington, an important, if unstated, goal is to ensure
continued US influence in the affairs of Europe and to have a major say in
eastern European security developments. "The bedrock of United States secu­rity
policy" remains the commitment to Europe, said Walter B. Slocombe,
undersecretary of defense for Policy. "We will remain fully involved in
European security issues."

For half a century, NATO has served as the mechanism for
exerting that influence, providing Washington's all-important bridge to the
Continent. Eastward expansion would ensure that the US would be able to play a
similar role in the nations emerging from the old Soviet empire.

"Worst Case"
Hedging

Some believe that the West must move quickly to erect a
defensive structure to guard against a possible collapse of reform in Russia
and a revival of Russian imperialism.

The establishmentarian Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) in
New York recently called for NATO to move more quickly to accept the
participants in the Partnership for Peace as full-fledged members, as well as
for the "partners" to prepare themselves more rapidly for full in­tegration.

Charles Kupchan, a former Euro­pean affairs expert on the
National Security Council who wrote the CFR report, said, "If Russia again
comes to pose a military threat to central Europe, NATO should be prepared to
carry out its traditional mission of territorial defense."

The belief is that this capability alone would have a major
influence on Russian political behavior.

The Case Against Expansion

Kremlin Politics

Critics note that even the reform-minded Russian leadership
has re­peatedly warned against expansion of the Alliance.

The Alliance's emphasis on ex­pansion threatens to undercut
the all-important relationship with Russia, Sen. Sam Nunn (D-Ga.) warned at a
seminar in Norfolk, Va., last June, and leads to the kinds of aggressive
behavior NATO seeks to deter.

The influential senior Democrat, who serves on the Senate
Armed Services Committee, added, "This is the stuff that self-fulfilling
prophe­cies and historic tragedies are made of."

Such critics as Senator Nunn say that this type of move is
likely to fan ultranationalist Russian senti­ments and strengthen the very anti‑Western
fanatics that NATO wants to thwart by expanding into the east.

The Clinton Administration, in fact, braced for resurgent
ultrana­tionalists to make broad gains in Russia's parliamentary elections,
setting the stage for a more danger­ous backlash in the Russian presi­dential
election in June.

Robert Legvold, a Russian scholar at Columbia University,
warns that the political climate could change dramatically and bring greater
dan­ger. "What we have now are Rus­sians shouting, complaining, and
criticizing Western policies," he said, "but with the rise of the
ultranation­alists, we could see Russia actually doing something about
it."

New Lines of Division

Many Russians, reeling from their nation's embarrassing
strategic, political, and economic setbacks, worry that NATO is attempting to
exploit Russia's weaknesses "to gain the most favorable strategic position
for further confrontation," said Alex­ander Konovalov, director of Mos­cow's
Center for Military Policy and Systems Analysis.

"Moscow faces a take-it-or-leave­-it offer—either agree
to a formal enlargement of NATO, or the en­largement will happen without Mos­cow's
approval," explained Alexei K. Pushkov, a foreign policy advisor and
speech writer who worked for former Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev.
"This is confrontational."

Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin shook up a Europe-wide
summit in Budapest in 1994 by claiming that NATO expansion raised the
"danger of plunging [the world] into a cold peace."

A year later, at the UN General Assembly last October, he
again warned, "The strengthening of one bloc today means a new confronta­tion,
beginning tomorrow."

Alex Pravda, director of the Rus­sian and East European
Center at St. Anthony's College at Oxford, said, "The overwhelming
perception in Russia is that [it] has no specific enemies, but neither does it
have any reliable friends."

Better Options

Critics of NATO expansion main­tain that NATO's goals may be
laudable but that there are better, less perilous ways to attain them.

Some contend that multinational European organizations would
be better suited to the task of securing European stability than a
nuclear-armed military alliance that had de­ployed forces against Russia for
more than forty years.

One group of analysts believes the Western European Union
should take responsibility for replacing NATO as the primary guarantor of Euro­pean
security.

Russian Foreign Minister Andrei V. Kozyrev said that the
Organiza­tion for Security and Cooperation in Europe ought to take on
"overriding responsibility" for the "maintenance of peace and
the strengthening of democracy and stability for the Euro-­Atlantic area."
President Yeltsin him­self suggested wider responsibilities for the United
Nations—where Rus­sia enjoys a veto over the actions of the fifteen-member
Security Coun­cil.

New Military Dangers

The fast-moving pace of NATO expansion left little time for
a hard-nosed assessment of the military impact of the Alliance protecting a
vastly larger area.

John E. Peters, a European secu­rity specialist at RAND
Corp., fore­sees military and political headaches in this development. While
NATO remained "a sound Alliance for the defense of the sixteen, it is
unlikely to succeed at extending security east­ward," Mr. Peters cautioned.
While he conceded that current Alliance members would enjoy "marginal
gains in crisis response and theater missile defenses" by moving its
boundaries to the east, the benefits "seem small" when compared to
the potential for trouble caused by alien­ating Russia.

Finally, some critics assert that while the US has no vital
interest in eastern Europe, it will be committed to defending these vulnerable
coun­tries.

First Things First

According to Senator Nunn and others, NATO membership does
not deal effectively with the vexing ques­tion of east European economic in­tegration
and thus sets the stage for conflicts and disagreements in this area.

Senator Nunn suggested that the former Warsaw Pact nations
first ought to secure full economic inte­gration in the exclusive fifteen-mem­ber
European Union and demonstrate that they are irreversibly committed to
democracy and free enterprise be­fore gaining membership in NATO.

The Immediate Future

A Delicate Balance

Faced with these competing pres­sures, Western leaders have
sought to reassure Russia, but they have not throttled back on the timetable
for the formal expansion.

To help assuage Moscow's deep­ening anxieties, the Alliance
has forged a direct relationship with Russia, dubbed "NATO Plus One."
The NATO Enlargement Study com­pleted last September stated that co­operation
between NATO and Rus­sia could "help to overcome any lingering distrust
from the Cold War period and help ensure that Europe is never again divided
into opposing camps."

Secretary of Defense William J. Perry urged the Russians to
broaden their ties with the Western Alli­ance, links that could potentially
include a "standing consultative commission" to coordinate defense
cooperation.

However, the Clinton Adminis­tration seemed prepared to go
only so far to comfort Russia, fearing that Moscow might interpret more overt
moves as evidence that it held a de facto veto over NATO expansion. Washington
would offer Moscow "deeper and deeper dialogue," Na­tional Security
Advisor W. Anthony Lake said, but he added that NATO would expand despite
Russian ob­jections.

"That is our policy, has been our policy, will be our
policy," Mr. Lake declared. "It is not going to shift, because it's
the right policy to create a more peaceful Europe."

One Russian expert on the Na­tional Security Council
observed that the Clinton Administration was strik­ing a delicate balance.

"Anybody
can expand NATO," he said. "The trick is to expand it in a way that
engages the Russians and doesn't draw new lines. We will nei­ther hit the
accelerator nor slam on the brakes."

Partnership For Peace

NationDate
of Signing

Former
Warsaw Pact

BulgariaFebruary
14, 1994

Czech RepublicMarch
10, 1994

HungaryFebruary
8, 1994

PolandFebruary
2, 1994

RomaniaJanuary
26, 1994

SlovakiaFebruary
9, 1994

Neutrals,
Nonaligned

AlbaniaFebruary
23, 1994

AustriaFebruary
10, 1995

FinlandMay
9, 1994

MaltaApril
26, 1995

SloveniaMarch
30, 1994

SwedenMay
9, 1994

Baltic
States

EstoniaFebruary
3, 1994

LatviaFebruary
14, 1994

LithuaniaJanuary
27, 1994

Other
Former Soviet States

ArmeniaOctober
5, 1994

AzerbaijanMay
4, 1994

BelarusJanuary
11, 1995

GeorgiaMarch
23, 1994

KazakhstanMay 27,
1994

KyrgyzstanJune
1, 1994

MoldovaMarch
16, 1994

RussiaJune
22, 1994

TurkmenistanMay 10,
1994

UkraineFebruary
8, 1994

UzbekistanJuly
13, 1994

Source: NATO

Stewart M. Powell,
White House correspondent for Hearst Newspapers, has covered national and
international affairs for years in Washington and London. His most recent
article for Air Force Magazine, "The China Problem Ahead," appeared
in the October 1995 issue.